Content note: This story includes mentions of domestic violence.

The first time I listened to ‘lacy’ by Olivia Rodrigo, I had just finished a therapy session that left my chest cavity ajar – my bleeding heart visible to all passers-by.

I was a fan of Rodrigo’s debut album SOUR; to me, it perfectly encapsulated an angry girlhood. I was hopeful for the catharsis her new album, GUTS, would bring.

On the upper quad of my college campus, I sat on the grass tucked away in a grove of pine trees. I put in my earbuds, pressed play on my phone, and read along as the lyrics slid up my screen. I broke out in a laugh to ‘all-american bitch’. I jammed out to ‘bad idea right?’ and whispered along to ‘vampire’ (which happens to fit perfectly in my register).

And then ‘lacy’ came on. The soft guitar enraptured me, and the layered melody tickled my brain in a way that us choir kids absolutely live for.

“I feel your compliments like bullets on skin,” Olivia sang. Did I hear that right? I rewound and reread the lyrics. Oh, wow. I felt my skin getting hot. 

The chorus wound down, and Rodrigo sang, almost defeatedly, “And I despise my jealous eyes / and how hard they fell for you.”

It took my breath away.

I sat there, feeling as naked and exposed as if I had streaked the quad instead. She was singing about me. She was singing about my high school best friend, and how much I envied her, loved her (as a friend) and adored her (as more than a friend).

I always thought that my best friend was pretty in every way I wasn’t, dated boys that I couldn’t, and – I suspect – liked me back in a way that I’d never heard articulated. That was, of course, until I heard ‘lacy’.

Image: Larissa Hofmann

I met Claire* in junior high school, after she started dating one of my best guy friends. Their relationship was like an asteroid – hot and bound for collision. I think she was his first love.

Claire and I became inseparable fairly quickly; we could always be found harmonising in the school choir room or in my backyard. When she moved a state away after ninth grade, we promised to stay best friends despite the distance.

Claire spent every summer and Christmas at my house after that. We shared my room, my bathroom, my hairbrush, my bed. She was just as much my grandmother’s granddaughter as I was – matching Christmas pyjamas included.

Claire’s now-long-distance romantic relationship with my friend wasn’t as enduring. The way he treated her put his and my friendship on the rocks.

Back at Claire’s house, her mum started cheating on her dad, who was later arrested for domestic violence.

For years, my dad and I tried to get Claire to permanently live with us, exploring things like emancipation, CPS and whatever else we could think of, but we could never work it out.

It all came to a head in our final year of school, when Claire asked for my advice over the phone about her family and relationship dynamics. My years-long helplessness turned sharp as my anger boiled over. After she justifiably resisted my advice, I said shitty things that I am too ashamed to retell here now.

Before I hung up, I told her I wanted to stay friends, but I didn’t know how to help her anymore.

It’s now been five years since that conversation, and we haven’t spoken at all.

I recently read that it’s a ‘canon’ event for queer girls to have a huge blow-out break-up with a close girl friend from high school.

That had to be what Olivia Rodrigo was getting at in ‘lacy’, right? I refuse to believe that song is just about two girls fighting over a boy. Sure, Claire and I fought over boys. But looking back, that’s not what the fights were really about.

I only fought with her about her shitty boyfriends and her shitty parents because I knew she deserved better. She deserved to be treated like the sweet, funny, talented girl she was.

That’s how I tried to treat her. I know – it all sounds so arrogant now.

I dreamt of her recently, while tossing and turning next to my fiancé.

Dream Claire was in the high school bathroom, and I heard her laugh echo off the tiles.

It felt like only yesterday she was the one I had fallen asleep next to, as she brushed my hair. I woke up not believing how long it had actually been.

She’s been on my mind a lot ever since I heard ‘lacy’.

In writing this, I realised why I feel so angry when fans and media outlets argue over whether the mystery “lacy” is Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift or who-the-fuck-ever: because it doesn’t matter. The speculation itself feels dismissive of my girlhood, my bisexuality, my own experience of a “lacy”.

It frustrates me that in ‘lacy’, this hint of queerness from a beautiful, successful woman is snuffed out as merely a tabloid friendship that went sideways. It could be that, but it also could be queerness.

I’m mad at myself for not realising I loved Claire the way I did.

I’m mad that I felt I had to compete with her over our looks, our talents, our friends.

“It’s like you’re out to get me,” Olivia sings. I’m mad she’s right.

I’m mad that I effectively ended our friendship over a phone call. But mostly, I’m mad I was so goddamn unfair to her for struggling to leave an abusive situation.

Yeah, “I despise my rotten mind / and how much it worships you,” still.

‘lacy’ isn’t the only song that makes me think of Claire.

Whenever I hear Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 album Golden Hour, I crack a grin, and I am transported to the pool in my backyard, during the last summer we spent together.

Claire and I would float around all day, harmonising together over Kacey. The way our voices intertwined was as intimate as anything else we could have done, but never did. The choir kids will get it.

Nothing could ever make me mad at that version of us.

When I saw Claire on Instagram the other day, my fiancé asked me if she and I had ever kissed.

“No, we never did. I don’t think so at least. Maybe on a dare once,” I replied, “but I would have remembered. Probably.”

I second-guessed myself because I could picture her lips so clearly in my mind. Or wait, were those her lips or that girl I dated in my first year at uni who looked like her a bit?

“Oh really?” he asked, surprised. “I’d just assumed you had.”

I was taken aback, but on second thought, it wasn’t hard to imagine why he would think that. He knew that Claire and I were indivisible.

All of the pictures from that 2019 summer were of us with our hands on each other, wearing bikinis or skin-tight jeans. We could get away with a playful smack or squeeze here and there because we were just friends, we thought. We were showing off for the boys, we thought.

Writing everything out, I understand how ridiculous it might sound. I’m a grown woman with a whole-ass fiancé, and I still can’t forget about a girl I was probably in love with over five years ago.

Hearing ‘lacy’ made me realise I still just want the best for her.

I wonder if she feels the same way.

Did she hear ‘lacy’ and associate me with “smart sexy lacy” or did she see “dazzling starlet / bardot reincarnate” as Sabrina Carpenter?

Do you even think Olivia’s Lacy knew her name had become “lacy”? We may never know.

I’ll never know what my and Claire’s lives would have looked like if we hadn’t had our catastrophic feminine friendship explosion. Maybe it’s better that way.

Neither of us were ever able to transcend the unspoken barrier that compulsory heterosexuality put between us. It’s the same barrier that pushes, pulls and pulses between so many pairs of queer best friends.

At least ‘lacy’ finally made me see it for what it was: Claire shaped my girlhood, whether she liked me back or not.

If she ever reads this and wonders if Claire is an alias for her, I hope she knows that it is, and that I’m sorry.